Scores of sleek galleys, all bristling with troops, flew the flags of two of Europe’s leading maritime states: the Republic of Venice and Republic of Genoa. Located on opposite sides of the Italian peninsula—Venice in the northeast and Genoa in the northwest—these ambitious, autonomous cities (along with a third rival, the Republic of Pisa) had been at loggerheads for nearly fifty years. They had fought in the Holy Land and in Constantinople. They had fought in the ports of the Black Sea, and around the islands of the Aegean and Adriatic. Their contest was for supremacy
